Continuous Assessment, the Catalyst for Building a Successful Information Literacy Program that Focuses on Student Needs

In keeping with the requirements of Texas Tech University\u27s current strategic planning initiative, assessment, and in particular student-learning assessment, has become a crucial step in the process of continuously developing and improving the Libraries\u27 Information Literacy program. This presentation reviews developments in the program, training for the librarians who participate in the program, the outreach and collaboration efforts to expand the program, and the important role that assessment plays in the process of discovering student needs, improving content, teaching, learning, and the operation of the program. The emphasis is on assessment as a catalyst in the process of continually improving the Information Literacy program. The program has been using various types of assessment for several years. Pre- and post-assessment surveying used in the library skills credit course has proved to be a useful tool for measuring student learning. However, librarians involved in the program are taking an experimental approach to assessment and are committed to assessing the various parts of the program using a number of techniques that seem to have the potential for being effective in providing useful findings. In doing this, they will address such issues as how to identify new kinds of techniques appropriate for assessing the program and assisting it in reaching its goals and vision for the future, and how to incorporate this experimental approach to assessment into the yearly cycle of planning, developing, marketing, implementing, assessing, and reviewing

Laser-induced pit formation in UV-Antireflective coatings

Previous studies have shown that nanometer scale defects can lead to the formation of submicrometer craters, if located in coatings with a relatively small thickness. Due to the small size, such damages are challenging to detect in the online and offline damage detection and may therefore lead to an overestimation of the LIDT for the tested optical component. However, the influence of these nanopits on the optical properties and the impact on the initiation of catastrophic damage was not investigated in detail in the past. In order to study the correlation between nanopits, optical properties and catastrophic damage, samples with an AR-coating were fabricated by means of ion beam sputtering (IBS) and tested for their laser resistance by LIDT raster scans in the nanosecond regime at 355 nm. The generation and morphology changes of the nanopits were monitored for different pulse numbers and in dependence of the starting fluence. In addition to the inspection with an optical microscope in differential interference contrast (DIC) mode as prescribed by ISO 21254, alternative inspection methods, for example, dark field microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), were used to detect the nanopits. The damage test revealed that nanopits occur rarely in standard AR-coatings and possess only a small relevance for the LIDT. The typical damage morphology observed consisted of micrometer-sized pits which exhibited a stable size over a large fluence range and no growth after repeated irradiation. © COPYRIGHT SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only

How States Make Race: New Evidence from Brazil

The Brazilian state recently adopted unprecedented race-targeted affirmative action in government hiring and university admissions. Scholarship would predict the state's institutionalization of racial categories has "race-making" effects. In this article, we ask whether the Brazilian state's policy turnabout has affected racial subjectivities on the ground, specifically toward mirroring the categories used by the state. To answer, we conceptualize race as multidimensional and leverage two of its dimensions—lay identification and government classification (via open-ended and closed-ended questions, respectively)—to introduce a new metric of state race-making: a comparison of the extent of alignment between lay and government dimensions across time. Logistic regression on large-sample survey data from before the policy turn (1995) and well after its diffusion (2008) reveals an increased use of state categories as respondents' lay identification in the direction of matching respondents' government classification. We conclude that the Brazilian state is making race but not from scratch nor in ways that are fully intended

A ética do silêncio racial no contexto urbano: políticas públicas e desigualdade social no Recife, 1900-1940

Mais de meio século após o preconceito racial ter se tornado o principal alvo dos movimentos urbanos pelos direitos civis nos Estados Unidos e na África do Sul, e décadas depois do surgimento dos movimentos negros contemporâneos no Brasil, o conjunto de ferramentas legislativas criado no Brasil para promover o direito à cidade ainda adere à longa tradição brasileira de silêncio acerca da questão racial. Este artigo propõe iniciar uma exploração das raízes históricas desse fenômeno, remontando ao surgimento do silêncio sobre a questão racial na política urbana do Recife, Brasil, durante a primeira metade do século XX. O Recife foi eé um exemplo paradigmático do processo pelo qual uma cidade amplamente marcada por traços negros e africanos chegou a ser definida política e legalmente como um espaço pobre, subdesenvolvido e racialmente neutro, onde as desigualdades sociais originaram na exclusão capitalista, e não na escravidão e nas ideologias do racismo científico. Neste sentido, Recife lança luzes sobre a política urbana que se gerou sob a sombra do silêncio racial.More than half a century after racial prejudice became central to urban civil rights movements in the United States and South Africa, and decades after the emergence of Brazil’s contemporary Black movements, Brazil's internationally recognized body of rights-to-the-city legislation still adheres to the country's long historical tradition of racial silence. This article explores the historical roots of this phenomenon by focusing on the emergence of racial silence in Recife, Brazil during the first half of the 20th Century. Recife was and remains a paradigmatic example of the process through which a city marked by its Black and African roots came to be legally and politically defined as a poor, underdeveloped and racially neutral space, where social inequalities derived from capitalist exclusion rather than from slavery and scientific racism. As such, Recife'sexperience sheds light on the urban policies that were generated in the shadow of racial silence

Une erreur de Grün

Dans la notice qu’il a consacrée au Parlement, A. Grün écrit : « Les troubles du royaume ayant suspendu le Parlement depuis 1358 jusqu’à 1360, les registres, pour cette période, rassemblent d’abord les lettres, et mêmes d’importantes ordonnances du roi et du Dauphin régnant, puis les arrêts et jugés. En tête de la table pour l’année 1360 se trouve le titre suivant : “Concordie coram presidentibus in curia sedentibus ab octabis festi Beati Martini hyemalis anno 1358 usque ad XII diem januarii..

L’INNOMMABLE

 A l’occasion d’un jugé traitant d’une matière assez courante (bris de sauvegarde), nous en profiterons pour évoquer les différentes injures qui sont fréquemment relevées dans les actes du Parlement. PREMIÈRE PARTIE : LE LITIGE Les parties sont d’une part le procureur du roi et Jean d’Aubigny, demandeurs, et d’autre part, Pierre Loiseleur et sa femme, défendeurs. I - Le récit des demandeurs Le demandeur expose qu’il est clerc et notaire du roi et, comme tel, se trouve, lui et sa famille, sous..

Le juge, la femme et son mari, dans le Parlement médiéval

Un jugé du Parlement qui montre que le Moyen-Âge n'était pas cette période sinistre que l'on imagine souvent : Olim, tome III, 1, p 31 [1290] XXXIX. Inquesta facta super injuriis et sevitatibus illatis domine de  Beau-Val per maritum suum visa est et expedita, et mandatum [est] ballivo Ambianensi quod ei de securitate provideat, ita quod ejus maritus sevicias non exerceat contra eam, et de victu sibi faciat sufficienter provideri, pro se et liberis suis qui sunt cum ea; et quia dictus maritu..